When Your Mind is Your Own House of Mirrors
This article was written by Hetvi Kamdar.
You pace back and forth in front of the mirror, examining every nook and corner of the image in front of you. And while you’re wholly uncomfortable as your vision distorts and mind runs at the speed of light, you imagine what life would feel like if only you could perceive yourself the way others perceive you. But how do you distinguish yourself when your very defining features seem to change each time you look at yourself? Time would go by so much quicker, you think to yourself, if every living second was not spent scrutinising your body.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), previously known by the term dysmorphophobia, is a mental disorder concerned with obsessing over one’s physical features. This phenomenon causes us to see ourselves in a warped manner and may result in increased anxiety and depression as well as eating disorders.
Over the years, a variety of terms ranging from hypochondriasis to psychosomatic disorder to Hässlichkeit Kümmerer (“One who is worried about being ugly”) have been used to interpret and analyse BDD. However, it was Enrico Morselli, a psychiatrist from Italy, that first described the disorder more than 100 years ago, by noting that “The dysmorphophobic, indeed, is a veritably unhappy individual, who in the midst of his daily affairs, in conversations, while reading, at table, in fact anywhere and at any hour of the day, is suddenly overcome by the fear of some deformity … (which) may reach a very painful intensity, even to the point of weeping and desperation”.
If this description seems a little far-fetched to you, let me prove you wrong — just go along with my words and allow your mind to paint you a picture.
You are at an amusement park, an enormous, fancy one that has all sorts of gimmicks and attractions designed to keep you engrossed for hours on end. You stroll around for a bit, buy some popcorn, and sit on a few rides. Who knows? Maybe you even win a stuffed toy.
Suddenly, you spot a tent with a banner entitled the “Horror House of Mirrors”. The mention of horror strikes your attention because how scary can a bunch of mirrors really be? You walk on ahead and enter the tent with your head up high.
And so, you start looking around when, out of nowhere, a feeling of terror overwhelms you. In one mirror, you appear to be a tiny stout person. In the other, your body seems to be elongated beyond reason. And in the third, your face seems to be that of a stranger.
Why are you feeling this way?
The real horror lies not in what is true, but what is seen.
A person with body dysmorphia experiences such feelings almost on a daily basis throughout their lives. Gazing into the mirror, fixating on the smallest of features, overthinking about how others perceive them — this is a habit that slowly, yet steadily becomes a part of their everyday life.
In the current day and age of social media where there is a constant focus on appearances, body dysmorphic disorder comes as an inevitable after-effect. All around us, we see definitions of supposed beauty standards and perfection is put on a pedestal, despite being a fictitious concept. It is almost impossible to detach oneself from this toxicity ingrained in our minds from the continuous intake of filtered online content. As a result, BDD is said to presently affect 1.7% to 2.9% of the general population, whilst continuing to surge.
If our brain constantly forces our body to believe that it is flawed, our body eventually gets overpowered into believing that it requires fixing. Reinforcing negative thought patterns repetitively could strengthen the symptoms of the disorders, and even incite physical behaviours such as fixing our hair, picking on our skin, or even resorting to cosmetic procedures to “fix” the apparent flaws.
We have trivialised the effects of BDD to such an extent that we have reduced it to something only ‘teenage girls’ go through. Two-thirds of the people who have been diagnosed with BDD are under the age of 18, with 60% of the patients being women. By normalizing this disorder as a typical experience of young adolescents while they undergo puberty, self-deprecation ends up becoming the norm. The disorder is largely undiagnosed because we, as individuals, feel ashamed for being overly concerned with ourselves. In an attempt to not sound vain, we put ourselves through the constant anxiety that this disorder brings along with it. In reality, BDD is a serious and difficult ailment that hinders people’s lives in copious ways.
Since the disorder is so sensitive and personal, most people refuse to either acknowledge the existence of body dysmorphia in their lives or ask for professional help, thereby making BDD extremely under-diagnosed. As such, not as many people are finding the relief they deserve from this way of thinking.
Mental illnesses are indisputably influenced by the environment and the culture that we are surrounded with. We are wired to absorb the behaviours of our close ones, and by virtue of doing so, learn how to interact with the world around us.
However, as a society that is focused on impressing others, we often fail to recognise the need for a healthy dose of self-care.
And even though there is no specific medication or intervention that can instantly cure BDD, we still ought to encourage those struggling to take the first step towards self-acceptance, whether by opening up in conversation with a friend or visiting a professional therapist.
This will be a terrifying step, surely. Yet, one that is definitely worth the pain.
At the very least, if you know anyone struggling with BDD, you may remind them that their lives do not have to feel like a House of Mirrors, and if they do, that it is probably time to get out of the amusement park.
